Nicholson Baker: Substitute: Going to School With a Thousand Kids

Many intelligent, successful grownups, I happen to know, never memorized their times tables. Life doesn’t need you to know them — but middle school does, and high school does. Otherwise you end up in special ed classes playing Fast Math bowling games or in Mr. Fields’s room, guessing quotients whenever a substitute teacher honks a horn. I looked up at the class. “ALL RIGHT, IT’S GETTING A LITTLE NOISY, MY FRIENDS,” I said. “WHAT IS NINE TIMES SEVEN?”

SIXTY-THREE.

“Good.”

Imogen came back from the nurse with a note. “Imogen has wheezing in lungs. Called home and left message. She states she feels better — please send her back with any difficulty breathing. Marianne (nurse).”

“I have allergies and it’s making my lungs hurt when I breathe,” said Imogen.

“I’m sorry, that’s a bad feeling,” I said.

Kirstin, one of the smart girls, came up. “Mr. Baker, I forgot what it’s called when you’re doing multiplication and you’re adding it.”

“Repeated addition!” said Wayne and Porter simultaneously. “JINX.”

“Double jinx,” said Porter.

“Triple jinx,” said Wayne.

“Okay, okay,” I said.

“You can’t do that,” said Caroline to Jonas. Jonas was taking pictures with his iPad.

“You called me a toilet,” said Jonas.

“What’s nine times seven?” I asked Caroline.

“Sixty-three,” said Caroline.

“You are good,” I said. I turned to Jonas. “What’s nine times seven?”

“Eighteen?”

“Mrs. Compton says we’re not allowed to take pictures,” said Caroline.

“Don’t take pictures, for gosh sakes! And don’t worry about it!”

“Mr. Baker, how do you spell repeated ?” said Kirstin.

I spelled it for her. Marshall, tipping, fell off his chair.

“You all right?” I said to him.

He nodded.

“Mr. Baker, look,” Porter said. His iPad said that he’d mastered three skills.

“You mastered three schools, good. Skulls? Skills. What’s nine times seven?”

“Um — sixty-three?”

“I love the sound of that.” The clock said noon. I did a Frank Sinatra imitation, “It’s time — to go to recess!”

Rianna sang, “Get rid — of all the kids.”

“I don’t want you to go,” I said. “I miss you guys.”

“I wouldn’t miss Marshall, if I were you,” Rianna said.

“He’s all right,” I said. “I can handle him.”

“I can’t,” said Rianna. “He’s annoying.”

“He always fools us and makes us mad,” said Sabrina.

“CLEAN UP,” said Demi.

“CLEAN IT UP,” I said. “WHAT’S NINE TIMES SEVEN?”

“SIXTY-THREE!”

“Oh, yes! I want that achievement in your heads today.”

“Mr. Baker, can I use the bathroom?” said Cormac.

“Use it or lose it,” I said. “ALL RIGHT, SHH! I HEARD A SUDDEN CLASHING OF LOUD VOICES. It’s like swords clashing together, and it hurts everybody’s ears. The exciting news is that recess is on. I’m going to be out there, watching you like a hawk, hoping you have fun. Let’s line up.”

We went outside. Imogen had a clipboard and a pencil with her to work on math, because she’d been in the nurse’s office. “You’re not watching me like a hawk,” said Porter.

Mrs. Hulbert announced that there was no kickball for the rest of the week. I asked her what happened.

“We’ve had fights.”

“Nobody can agree on the rules,” said Mr. Stowe. “I’ve been recommending all year just a list of rules that are laminated and posted, so we all can agree.”

“Certainly makes sense to me,” I said.

This was Mr. Stowe’s first year at the school. “First year anywhere, I guess,” he said. He’d gotten a philosophy degree at U. Maine Orono, and then he’d worked as a substitute for a while, and then as an ed tech, and then he got his teaching certificate.

“They’re lucky to have you,” I said. “You have a good way with the kids.”

“I’m trying,” he said. “It doesn’t always work.”

I watched some basketball happening for a while. Imogen came up to ask what we were doing in the afternoon. I looked at the plans. Lunch, silent reading, and literacy worksheets, I said.

“Oh, no,” said Imogen. “I don’t like worksheets.”

“I don’t either,” I said. “I just like talking to people.”

She pointed at the ground. “That’s a bunch of ants,” she said.

“They work all the time,” I said. “After a rain they have to dig.”

“Dig the little hole that they fall through,” said Imogen.

“They have to take out the little grains of sand,” I said. “It’s a lot of work to be an ant.”

“Especially when you’re so small,” said Imogen. “When I was living where my dad is living now, we used to have carpenter ants chewing our wall. All the time.”

“We have them, too,” I said. “After a while the wood turns to powder.”

“Especially when you have a little brother that likes poking holes in the wall.”

Imogen sat under a tree and worked on her clipboard for a while. Then she coughed and said, “Ow.”

“Ouch,” I said. “That’s deep in there.”

She showed me what she’d written on her clipboard: “Dear, Mr. B, Today the class was grate!! Love Imogen.”

“I’m glad,” I said. “Let me ask you this, and answer me honestly. Does it drive you crazy that the teachers are always telling people to be silent, to be quiet? They’re always saying, ‘I hear people talking!’ Does that drive you nuts, or is that just the way school is?”

“That’s just the way school is,” Imogen said, smiling.

“It sometimes hurts me when a teacher suddenly says, ‘You will give me five minutes of recess!’”

Imogen said, “Yeah, I saw you like blinking a couple times.”

“Did you catch that? I didn’t know anyone caught that. Anyway, it’s all good, right?”

“Mm,” she said.

We looked out at the playground for a while. “Will you be happy when it’s summertime?”

“Yes!”

“LINE UUUUUUUP!” called Devin, Sabrina, and Demi.

Balls went into wire baskets. Lines formed and went quiet. At Mr. Stowe’s signal, we snaked inside, with chosen door-holders holding the doors. It was time for lunch. “QUIET IN THE LINE,” I said. My class walked off to the cafeteria.

Ten minutes later, three girls, Myra, Rianna, and Sabrina, returned carrying their brunch-for-lunch lunches and their lunches from home. “Can we sit in here?” said Rianna.

“Everybody keeps barging into all of our fights,” said Myra.

“We need to talk,” said Sabrina.

“Yeah, we need to talk and work things out,” said Rianna.

They pulled up chairs around a table near me and, using several colors of Sharpie, began making behavioral charts for each other, and for several other students who weren’t there, with boxes to check yes or no.

“Do you need to talk in private?” I said, eating a sandwich at Mrs. Compton’s desk, under the American flag. “I can move.”

“No, it’s okay,” said Sabrina.

“We have to work this out ASAP,” said Rianna.

“If we keep yelling at each other, Mrs. Compton will have to move us.”

They talked seriously, at times formally, coloring in their charts, drawing lines with rulers — almost as if they were playing house or having a tea party. They were playing guidance counselor. Myra wrote, “No fighting, no bullying,” at the top of her paper. “That’s just a reminder,” she said. The problem, I gathered, had to do with secrets told to two of the boys and withheld from some of the girls. There was a fair amount of giggling.

“Sabrina, eat over your tray,” said Myra.

“Whenever we get in a fight, we write yes, and each box is for each day,” said Sabrina.